Games

August 06, 2008

It didn't take long for the recently merged Activision and Blizzard Entertainment to make some interesting strategic moves. They recently announced a plan to launch a new digital music store to compete with iTunes. Wait, aren't these two companies in the gaming business?

As we have seen, many of the recent blockbuster game titles have been music-focused. Rock Band and Dance Dance Revolution have been major hits over the past couple of years. Activision Blizzard's Guitar Hero is the hottest selling game over the past year and has shown to dramatically affect sales of songs included in the game. For example, the chart below (or in the extended post) shows the impact that the GH3 launch had on digital sales of songs in the game (chart courtesy of Ars Technica). Not only did song sales make a dramatic leap, that leap continued to grow and sales remained high even weeks after the launch of the game.